ANIM249 - Core Principles of Technical Animation
In this course, students learn the principles of a creative 3D pipeline from modeling to rendering. Students synthesize these skills to produce appealing environmental assets for animation. The coursework involves proposal of a fictitious character for whom students will be developing a specific indoor environment. The idea is to coax students to dive deep within the traits of the character and explore how they impact the environment design while learning to model, texture, light and render. For most students, this is practically their very first attempt at anything 3D.
ANIM249 has been rebranded from its initial course number - ANIM250. Additionally, the coursework for the graduate pre-requisite course ANIM505 is similar. Material from that class may also be included in the student showcase.
ANIM313 - 3D Production Pipeline
Using the 3D animation pipeline, students explore necessary roles, build their collaboration skills and learn effective time-management methods. The ask is for students to create their first micro-short film in 10 weeks using as much collaboration as they can obtain through recruitment. Having some knowledge about every facet of animation individually, this is their first attempt at putting all their skills to work together to formulate a short narrative from concept all the way to rendering.
Since the project has only 10 weeks for completion, we skip the character rigging portion of the pipeline. Students use pre-made rigs from the internet as characters instead.
ANIM316 - Facial Setup and Animation
In this course, students explore all rigging and animation related aspects of a humanoid face. We start with a pre-modeled face. The coursework takes the students through exploration of favorable and unfavorable facial topology and resolution, study of facial musculature, various rigging techniques that could be used to set up a face, and finally collaborating with animators to create an animation. The final product is an edit that showcases the rig and the final animation.
Pre-modeled base meshes are downloaded from the internet.
ANIM349 - Digital Modeling for Environments and Props
In this course 3D environment and prop modelers create complex and believable models that match a specific art direction. Students explore advanced topics in 3D environment and prop modeling, with an emphasis on hard-surface modeling techniques and stylization that supports storytelling.
ANIM356 - Advanced Character Setup
This course explores the basic principles of creating an animatable skeleton for a 3D puppet, as applied to a series of anatomically different biped characters. Students select a prebuilt model to rig, learn about optimized geometry for rigging, explore advanced tools and apply them to various anatomical problems to find modeling and rigging solutions for believable character motion, and finally test the rigs in collaboration with animators.
Pre-modeled base meshes are downloaded from the internet.
ANIM369 - Animation Look Development
In this course, students use a variety of approaches to create illustrative-quality look development and bring an original aesthetic to their characters. A story-based approach towards designing characters is emphasized. The process of executing said design involves technical learning. The course involves spending time concepting, modeling and texturing the character, static cloth sims, prop modeling, and finally lighting and rendering for showcase.
Pre-modeled base meshes are downloaded from the internet.
ANIM419 - Cloth and Hair for Animation
With a focus on CFX, this course explores the use of CG dynamics, including hair and cloth simulation, to create secondary motion and enhance animated storytelling. Static cloth draping is studied using software such as Marvelous Designer. Alongside this, learning to set up dynamic nCloth simulations form the base of the coursework here. I also take this opportunity to expose my students to basics of Unreal Engine 5. We learn how to import assets into the UE5 environment from Maya and Substance Painter, create materials, light and render.
Character models and animations are borrowed from the internet.
